A new credit card swipe option for vending machines on Truman State’s campus has been in place since midterm break.
Jackson Brothers, the company Truman contracted for vending machines on campus, introduced a prepaid option to campus vending machines. The prepaid option will work with student ID cards and with a cell phone app. So far this is in its testing phase, which means the option could be canceled if the costs can’t be justified.
Truman’s purchasing supervisor Kim Murphy says there is a large cost involved in buying the card reader.
“[The Jackson Brothers] have to think about that too, of justifying the cost value of that machine,” Murphy says.
Murphy says the swipe option uses a cellular network rather than the campus Wi-Fi network. She says the Jackson Brothers are running the new swipe option as a test to see how it performs.
Murphy says that is why not all vending machines on campus have the option right now.
“By my understanding, they’re putting them on the machines that are more higher use,” Murphy says. “So that’s why [the option] is not on all the machines.”
Freshman Grant Wallace says he uses the vending machines. He says users should be aware using the swipe option forces users to pay a slightly higher price than cash purchases because of a transaction fee.
“I noticed that when I purchased [a snack and a drink] I was charged a little extra than the retail price because of the transaction of using the credit card,” Wallace says. “I wish they would have made that more evident.”